How might we work together?
I hope that in setting out what I try to offer in therapy we’ll have greater shared context and you’ll be more able to recognise and name how you’re finding our work together, whether it’s meeting your needs and whether you want more or less of something from our sessions.
I think the landscape of therapy is very varied, and it can sometimes be confusing and disorienting, particularly if you’re fairly new to being a client.
I’m happy to ‘go meta’ anytime about our work together and hope to always engage thoughtfully with anything that’s not working so well between us. I’m also happy to have a chat about what I know about other modalities, and I’ll signpost and refer where I can.
Below is a summary of the different things I hope therapy with me might offer you.
A space to feel held and understood
There may be aspects of your experience that feel distressing, shameful or scary, or that tend to be misunderstood by others. Perhaps these are events that have happened to you, or things about you that others have told you aren’t okay.
A significant determinant of whether we experience an event as traumatic or as a source of ongoing disturbance or distress is not just the ‘badness’ of it, but whether there is or was someone there for us when most needed, to help us feel safe, to reassure us of our goodness and value, and to listen to what happened and believe us.
Fortunately we don’t get only one chance after trauma to return to safety, nor is there a time limit on feeling accepted and understood for who we are.
In a safe environment, painful, lonely, traumatic memories can be revisited or aspects of yourself you feel conflict about can be shared, and imbued with a feeling of some of the connection and safety we create together, thereby becoming a little less difficult for you to carry.
Guidance as you explore your inner experience
Two features of the mind that make ‘parts work’ a powerful way to heal from trauma are that the mind can talk to itself – it isn’t a unified whole – and that we can create vivid emotional experiences in our minds. This means you can connect with a wounded part of yourself and offer it support and understanding, as well as inventing healing and soothing experiences for yourself that can be surprisingly powerful.
Together we might:
- get to know parts of you that you have a difficult relationship with, discover how they have been trying their best for you, and work with them to meet their needs and help them behave in a way that fit your present day circumstances.
- create a safe space for a vulnerable part of you to spend time in when triggers happen in the outside world.
- develop visualisations to support you in setting boundaries.
- create the ideal parent figure you needed in your childhood so they can care for your inner child.
- have a conversation with a family member or loved one that has been left unfinished, or support your internalised family members in their own healing.
- spend time exploring your felt sense of a situation so that your cognitive mind can benefit from your intuitive wisdom.
- replay a trauma from the past in your mind but give it a different ending.
Some people find that ‘dropping inside’ feels natural. You might be drawn to metaphor and imagery, or have a rich felt sense of situations long before your cognitive mind catches up. There might seem to be different parts of you, such as a people-pleasing part, an angry part or an impulsive part, that show up differently through your sensations, thoughts, tone of voice and beliefs about the world. Perhaps you can get in touch with a clear sense of your inner child and how you feel towards them.
At the same time, not everyone knows what it means to drop inside and perhaps you’re even sceptical that just imagining things could have any profound healing effect. That’s okay too! If this is a way you’re interested in working, we can figure it out together.
A space for figuring things out
We might sometimes be in a more intellectual or problem-solving mode, focusing on increasing your cognitive awareness of what’s going on in your life and building the skills to improve it. I consider your rational, thinking parts as important allies in improving your well-being, and welcome these parts in our work together.
For example:
- You might come to therapy wondering if there’s something wrong, broken or shameful about you. It can be relieving to explore how your feelings and behaviours make sense based on your past experiences and what we know about trauma and human nature.
- When you’re triggered, parts of you might act out familiar responses before your rational mind has caught up. As we strengthen your intellectual awareness of how these situations play out, it can be easier to recognise them in the moment, press pause, and introduce the possibility of behaving differently.
- You might be stuck in repetitive arguments with a loved one, and want to talk through changes you could make to your interactions with them to make your conflicts more productive.
- Maybe you’re facing an ethical dilemma, feeling unsure how to act in line with your values, and want to talk through your options.
- Perhaps you’re neurodivergent, find a lot of ‘life advice’ doesn’t work for you or is counterproductive, and want to work on figuring out how to organise your life in a way that’s effective for your neurotype.
A space to try something new
We can also view sessions and our working relationship as a space in which we can create new possibilities and explore ways of behaving that you normally wouldn’t try.
For example:
- is there a part of you that you usually struggle to access in interactions? If you usually suppress your anger, perhaps we can make it safe enough to let me know if you feel angry about something I do or say. If you tend to be appeasing, can you try out being more assertive with me?
- how might you sit differently, speak differently, or communicate differently with me if you really allow a part of you that’s usually not at the forefront of how you behave to take up space?
- if there’s an object or experience that is objectively safe but that you find triggering, together we might work up to bringing the trigger into the room with us and developing new ways of engaging with it.
